In a Small Town, a Battle Over a Book

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September 3, 1989, Page 001022Buy Reprints The New York Times Archives

If a group of local parents had let her speak to them before ''The Catcher in the Rye'' was banned from her high school, Shelley Keller-Gage says she would have told them she believes it is a highly moral book that deals with the kinds of difficulties their own children are facing.

But Mrs. Keller-Gage, an English teacher, was asked not to speak, and a small group of people led by a woman who says she has not read - and never would read - such a book, persuaded the school board to ban it this month from the Boron High School supplementary reading list.

''Unfortunately, what happened is not at all unusual,'' said Anne Levinson, assistant director of the Office of Intellectual Freedom in Chicago. ''Censorship is still very much with us. As a matter of fact, I think 'The Catcher in the Rye' is a perennial No. 1 on the censorship hit list.''

Ms. Levinson said J. D. Salinger's 1951 novel about a troubled teen-ager named Holden Caulfield seems to have a narrow lead over John Steinbeck's ''Of Mice and Men'' and ''Grapes of Wrath'' in arousing the objections of communities or special-interest groups that are increasingly moving to ban books. 'Undercurrent of Fear'

On Wednesday, People for the American Way, a group that opposes censorship, issued a report listing 172 incidents in 42 states of attempted or successful censorship in schools in the last year, illustrating what the group's president, Arthur Kropp, called ''an unreasonable undercurrent of fear about the so-called 'dangers' of public school instruction.''

The report, the group's seventh annual censorship roundup, said efforts to restrict books and curriculums from classrooms and school libraries were on the rise nationwide, with nearly half of them succeeding.

The Boron board's 4-to-1 vote has aroused this town of 4,000 at the edge of the Mojave Desert, and when Mrs. Keller-Gage, a 35-year-old Boron native, goes out, she said she hears a buzzing: ''That's her. There she goes.''

Although ''The Catcher in the Rye'' is now banned from Boron's classrooms, it has gained a new readership among townspeople, and Helen Nelson, the local librarian, has a waiting list of 15 people for the book, which she says has been sitting on the shelf all these years pretty much unnoticed. Offending Passage Is Marked

Ed Roberts, a school board member who works for a transportation company, carries a copy in the front seat of his pickup truck. He has shown one passage to people so often that the book frequently falls open to that section, whose profanity he finds objectionable.

Jim Sommers, the head of the school board, who operates Jim's Mobil Service, says he is halfway through the book, though he is having a hard time keeping up his interest. He, too, objects to the profanity.

''There's 69 other books on that list,'' said Mr. Sommers, referring to the state-approved supplementary reading list. ''I'm sure they'll find another good one. The students are going to get a full and complete education without that book.''

Vickie Swindler, the parent who raised the first objections when her 14-year-old daughter, Brook, showed her the book, has been calling her friends, reading passages from it, mostly the one on page 32 with three goddamns.

When she found out about the language in it, Mrs. Swindler said, ''I called the school, and I said, 'How the hell did this teacher get this book?' ''

''Yes, there's harshness and profanity in society,'' said F. O. Roe, a board member who runs a furniture and flower shop, responding to the argument that the book's contents are no longer as shocking as they once were. ''But we don't have to accept them, just the same as we don't have to accept the narcotics that are in the streets and the murders that are happening all over the country. We live in harmony in this little town. It's almost like it's sitting off to the side of the rest of the country.'' Message for Townspeople? Mrs. Keller-Gage said the Salinger book might carry a particular message for people like these.

''These people are being just like Holden, the ones who are trying to censor the book,'' she said. ''They are trying to be catchers in the rye.''

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The book derives its title from a passage in which Holden Caulfield describes his vision of himself as a protector of innocence:

''Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all,'' he says. ''Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean, except me. And, I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all.''

Mrs. Keller-Gage said she observed this same poignant and ultimately impossible hope among the Boron townspeople who banned the book.

''They're wanting to preserve the innocence of the children,'' she said, ''and I think that instead of trying to preserve their innocence, we have to try to deal with these children losing their innocence. I think society is the one that is kind of taking the innocence away. Things are not innocent anymore, and I think we've got to help them deal with that, to make reasonable choices, to be responsible citizens.''

When she assigned the book to her students, Mrs. Keller-Gage said, she told them: ''If you're looking for titillation, go home and turn on HBO, because you're not going to get it from this book.''

For those whose parents objected to the book, she offered an alternate, Ray Bradbury's ''Dandelion Wine,'' which she said was ''the most innocent book I could think of that would still be at their reading level.''

''These books they are trying to censor are comparatively mild in contrast to some of the things that are available to the kids,'' said Donna Hulsizer, who wrote the report issued by People for the American Way, a private, non-partisan group based in Washington.

Clearly, though, ''The Catcher in the Rye'' is a disturbing book that has become a symbol to people who wish to control reading matter in the schools. Ms. Hulsizer said the objections to its language seemed to mask deeper concerns that were harder to express.

''I think there is the idea that children should not be exposed to things that are at all troubling or disturbing to them,'' she said.

Ms. Levinson said the library association had found that attacks on the book over the years covered several concerns.

''Usually the complaints have to do with blasphemy or what people feel is irreligious,'' she said. ''Or they say they find the language generally offensive or vulgar, or there is a sort of general 'family values' kind of complaint, that the book undermines parental authority, that the portrayal of Holden Caulfield is not a good role model for teen-agers.''

In Boron, the only board member who voted against the ban was Warren Hurst, a retired high school history teacher. ''It isn't a book that I personally would just go pick up and read,'' he said, ''but I have no objections whatsoever if someone else wants to read it. I just would never vote to ban a book.''

The fifth board member, Dennis Davies, an electrician, voted with the majority to ban the book.

As the school year began this week, Mrs. Keller-Gage's three dozen copies of ''The Catcher in the Rye'' were on a top shelf of her classroom closet, inside a tightly taped cardboard box.

In their place, she said, she would be assigning ''Fahrenheit 451,'' by Ray Bradbury, a novel about book burning.

A version of this article appears in print on September 3, 1989, on Page 1001022 of the National edition with the headline: In a Small Town, a Battle Over a Book. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe